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Zolita on her sexy video for “Explosion” and genre-bending

Out artist Zolita is bursting onto the scene in a blaze of highly-stylized genre-bending noir-bluegrass/R&B. Her roots in the country-rock guitar style blend seamlessly with Grammy-award winning producer ?ÿmen‘s (Beyonce, Drake + Ludacris) orchestrations. Her self-directed video for first single “Explosion” has been attracting much attention both for its beauty and its girl-on-girl heavy content.

Behind the comet is a 20-year old-NYU film student whose work ethic would appear to put most of ours to shame. She is at the brink of the release of her very first EP entitled Immaculate Conception out this May with a full course load in tow and taking the time to talk to music writers like myself. We caught up about the EP, her inspirations and the first love that sparked it all.

AfterEllen.com: How do you define yourself as an artist?

Zolita: My art is about the whole package. I grew up playing bluegrass guitar. Then I did photography in high school. Now I go to NYU for film, so I’m really interested in that as well. And then I became interested in music again. So I guess combining all of those things to create that package.

AE: How do you balance school and your music?

Zolita: It’s become kind of difficult. I don’t really sleep very much. It’s hard. This semester especially because I’m in more general education classes vs. film classes, which generally just have a lot more reading and a lot more work. But I wouldn’t give it up, I really, really do enjoy school.

AE: Where do your bluegrass roots come from?

Zolita: When I was around six or seven my dad started teaching me guitar and I started doing competitions, there’s actually old little viral videos of me playing when I was younger on YouTube, but when I turned 13 and became a teenager all I wanted to play was pop music. Bluegrass wasn’t super cool at that age. I recently fell back in love with it.

AE: When did you start becoming interested in making R&B inspired productions?

Zolita: My music taste ranges all over the place but I’ve always loved R&B. The producer that I’m working with saw me perform at the Galore Magazine fashion week party last fall and gave me his card, and that’s kind of how that all came about. It’s really cool with him, because with my songs, I write them on guitar and they’re kind of more folky, singer/songerwriter-y, and then he injects this R&B sensibility into them. I can’t seem to define the genre that we’ve created together. But it feels really cool.

AE: So how has the experience been working with ?ÿmen?

Zolita: It’s been super incredible. There’s so many things that he has. He’s been mentoring me. He’s been mentoring me a lot. Especially with the EP release he knew exactly the sort of things to say. He’s just had so much experience, which is just so helpful. In the studio too with these little ad-libs and these little things that he has me saying that weren’t originally part of the song, you know things that I normally wouldn’t think of. It’s pretty amazing.

AE: Your first EP Immaculate Conception is out soon, can you tell us a little about the story of it coming together?

Zolita: Before the songs on this EP I virtually only wrote pop music. It’s easy to write observational style music rather than personal music, and I don’t know I didn’t feel like I had the authority to write about love until it happened. And so “Explosion” was the inception of all of the songs that are kind of related on my EP. And, well, I fell in love with my best friend who didn’t love me back and it’s the story of that. Songwriting was an extremely cathartic way to deal with it. Unrequited love is a universal experience that I think a lot of people can relate to through music.

AE: Why does it matter to you to identify as a queer artist? How has previous artists visibility in the community affected your ability to be out?

Zolita: I never felt like I needed to label myself exactly cause qualities I’m attracted to in a person are their energy and their passion and their talents that have nothing specific to do with their gender. But I think it’s so cool that I’m living in this time now in New York City where that’s kind of become the normal. And I think more important than queer artist visibility is queer-themed art visibility in general. Pop culture needs more honest representations of LGBT people and their experiences-not the constant archetype that is being presented.

AE: Is there any amount of this being marketing? That it has become really cool to be not even gay or lesbian, but this genderless idea of “I’m queer and I make queer music.” How much of it is something that really you embody and you think is incredible and freeing to express and how much of it is “This just works right now”?

Zolita: That’s the one thing I don’t want my music to be, is easily defined by that. Which I think a few years ago when I first started doing this I thought that way and I thought “Oh, it’s kind of trendy right now, and I can market it that way” but I feel like now, and with this video too, it’s not only queer people who can relate to it, it’s just honest experience. I don’t want people to look at my music video and see “queer art” because it involves a girl-on-girl scenario. People don’t look at heterosexual scenarios and label it “straight art” you know? I want people to look at my video and see an honest, human, experience. And so far, from the responses I’ve gotten, I think it translates that way because it’s vulnerable and taken from an actual experience in my life. It isn’t spectacle or dramatized.

AE: Whats next for you?

Zolita: Opening for people and definitely doing more live shows. Figuring out what my live show is going to be because the music is kind of soft and different than pop music, where there’s a lot more movement. I think there’ll will have to be some kind of ritualistic cool aspect to the live performance. And definitely more music videos.

AE: What is one thing that we wouldn’t be able to find out about you through a deep internet lurk?

Zolita: I’m obsessed with really bad country. Pop country. An unpopular opinion in New York for sure. There’s this duo name Maddie and Tae and they have this song called “Girl In A Country Song”-it’s kind of a retort to bro country. It’s so fun, you should look it up. They’re both 18 and it talks about how girls are portrayed in country music.

For more on Zolita check out her website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And we have an exclusive download of the single for you, too!

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